The Sean McDowell Show - Do Miracles Still Happen? A Harvard-Trained Scholar Speaks OUT

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

Are modern miracles real or are they just wishful thinking? Dr. Candy Gunther Brown, a Harvard-trained professor of religious studies at Indiana University, and author of Testing Prayer, is here to explain the most provocative questions in faith and science: Does prayer still heal? What does the science show about the efficacy of prayer? I hope this conversation inspires you to think critically and faithfully about supernatural claims.READ: Testing Prayer, by Candy Gunther Brown (https://amzn.to/4djsAGW)*Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf)*USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM)*See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK)FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowellTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=enInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Hundreds of millions of people worldwide today claim healing from blindness, deafness, cancer, and other sicknesses and maladies through prayer. This is a topic I've wanted to cover for a long time and have finally found the right person, Dr. Candy Gunther Brown, who is a professor of religious studies at Indiana University. She's published a book called Testing Prayer with Harvard University Press on this exact topic. Dr. Brown, thanks for joining me. Oh, thanks so much. Glad to be here.

Well, we're going to jump into your study and what makes it unique and the findings. Can we just start with a personal question? What has personally interested you in scientifically studying the efficacy of prayer? It really started in 2003 with a personal crisis. My husband, Dr. Joshua Brown, is a neuroscientist who does fMRI studies of the brain. And all of a sudden, he had a seizure. He was 30 years old, I was nine months pregnant. And two and a half weeks after the birth of our first daughter, he was diagnosed with an untreatable and presumably terminal brain tumor. This launched us on really an odyssey of the last 21 years in pursuit of healing and spoiler alert,

he's alive and well today. And we didn't actually do anything medical for him, not because we're anti-medical, we're not, but it wasn't going to help in his situation. For the kind of tumor he had, there was just nothing, even chemotherapy, radiation, surgery. They don't even statistically prolong life. And so we started to ask the question, does Jesus heal today? And as we pursued a lot of ministry for Josh, we also started to see a lot of things besides his own recovery.

We started to see blind people who were able to see, we started to see tumors dissolve in the course of five or 10 minutes. And so we each turned our scholarship in the direction of trying to understand not only the gift that we had received but also really what turned out to be a global pattern of many many people experiencing dramatic recoveries that there simply isn't medical or natural explanation to account for.

And so that is why we started to investigate using empirical and scientific methods of study. Makes perfect sense that you would both be motivated to study this after such a dramatic, unexpected encounter. Now right away, I know some people are thinking, okay you're a Christian, you had this experience, so you're going into this with a certain kind of bias. Now we're gonna come back to your methodology, what your worldview is, you've laid that on the table in your book, but maybe share with us just two or three more other stories that I've you've researched this over the past couple decades. Just kind of stand out like, wow, if there is such a thing as answered prayer,

these are as good of candidates as you might find. Yeah, well, I mean, in a way to jump into some of the most dramatic that I saw firsthand would be when we were conducting a study of vision and hearing in Mozambique. And there was one woman in particular I think of, I call her Miriam, who was in her mid-60s. And if you put a hand in front of her face about a foot away, she wouldn't be able to tell you that there was a hand there, let alone be able to count how many fingers you were holding up and let alone being able to read an eye chart. And after about five minutes of prayer,

she just had this huge smile on her face. And she said, in her own language, she said, before I couldn't see, but now I see everything. And just that joy and delight. And this is in a context where everyone in these villages know each other. There's no way that you could put a plant in the audience. And if someone couldn't see the next day, everyone would know this. And the stakes are actually life and death, because there can be quite hostile relationships between different religious groups. So she had no motivation to lie about this.

And there was there were many mechanisms for verifying both that she was healed and that she stayed healed apart from the the scientific testing that we did and the analysis that we did. And there was a young man in the same set of meetings who had never been able to hear or to speak in his entire life. And again, his entire village knew him, brought him for prayer. And after a few minutes of prayer, he was able to respond to sounds in the headphones that we had on him.

Whereas before, if you had had a motorcycle right next to him, he wouldn't have even known it. He was that profoundly kind of with hearing loss. And he could repeat whispered words like Jesus behind his head as well as respond to the equipment. And again, it was just, it was such a life-changing event for him and for his father who was there and for their entire community. You just don't forget that kind of a story. It's unique that both you and your husband bring scientific and academic rigor to this, but have seen and experienced the miraculous firsthand, usually it's one or the other. Now maybe we'll take a step back and this will be helpful. What is some of your background and your training

academically and your husband's background and training that maybe make you capable of and in some ways even more than capable, well suited to examine this? Yeah. Well, I mean, I'll actually just start with a very basic kind of religious biography that, yes, we both grew up in the church, but we grew up in— I was in a Mennonite brethren church, which I would call a pacifist Baptist for shorthand, and he grew up in an actual Baptist church. So we believed that Jesus did miracles in the Bible, but we didn't think that Jesus still did them. So our our assumption going into this was actually very skeptical. It wasn't just confirming beliefs that

we already had. We had never had this sort of experience. And academically, we had both pursued rigorous higher education. I received my bachelor's degree, my master's degree, and my PhD all from Harvard University, studying history, literature, American civilization, and religion. And my husband had been trained in cognitive and neural systems, or basically brain

science or neuroscience at Boston University after an undergraduate engineering degree from the University of California at San Diego. And so we were used to using all of the methods of trying to falsify rather than confirm hypotheses, because that's how knowledge advances. It's not when you try to confirm what you already believe, but you want to find out is, have I been believing things that aren't in line with experiences? And that can be a personal experience. it can be an observation of nature. And so when we started to see recoveries, our own and many other peoples, when we prayed for people and when other people prayed for us, these were anomalies that required explanation, and that suggested that our current paradigm for interpreting the world was inadequate because it did not

account for the data that we were observing. Your story somewhat intersects with mine about 10 years ago studying near-death experiences. I honestly was skeptical. My faith did not rest upon it. I thought, well, I'll just look into it and was completely surprised by the careful study and peer-reviewed accounts and just the multiplicity of stories and evidence that was there surprised me. So in your case, your faith didn't rest upon this at all. If none of these miracles happened today, you could still be a Christian, believe Jesus did the miraculous and just hold a cessationist view. That doesn't mean your conclusions are true,

but bringing those assumptions to the table, I think help rather than somebody's job relying upon actually showing that this is true. Now, did you go into this study at all with any kind of concern thinking, gosh, you know, I went to Harvard, I teach at Indiana University, if I start studying this stuff and come to certain conclusions,

my peers are going to think I'm crazy, this could cost me academically, or is that really not in the back of your mind? I mean, it was in the front of my mind, not even in the back of my mind. I mean, even the fact of studying evangelical Christianity and even before the last few years when that term has been kind of taken on a life of its own, it is a suspicious topic of study in the secular university. And I've not gotten jobs because people knew that I studied this, even though I was because people knew that I studied this, even though I was by their own account,

the most qualified for the job, because there is a concern that there is an inherent bias in a scholar who shares beliefs of the people that they are studying. And so then to turn to the topic of prayer for miraculous healing, I knew that this was a risky, possibly a career destroying kind of move.

And for many years, I mean, honestly, we didn't share our personal testimony in a public setting. I would talk to someone in my office, I would talk to them over dinner, but this was not something that I shared in publications or in academic talks. That's really only been in the last couple of years when we decided that now is the time to be quite public, even about our personal beliefs. But but yes, and I mean, not, not even I say, kind of in a paranoid way was I concerned about doing research on healing. I have been criticized and there have been professional reputation consequences that go with the choice.

But I have to follow the data where it leads me, even from a purely academic point of view. And from a Christian point of view, I have to do what God calls me to do. So those two actually dovetail in this particular instance. We're going to walk into your unique study and your approach and how you try to kind of bracket off your worldview and follow the empirical evidence. But it surprised me in your book, and it makes perfect sense, that you have kind of a chapter on kind of the history of studies leading up to this and the history of scientifically trying to study prayer. The effects of prayer,

this could be a whole talk in itself, but maybe just share some of the key times and events and studies leading up to your study that we should be aware of. And maybe if there's some limitations in them. Yeah, well, I mean, I think we could start in some ways with the Protestant up to your study that we should be aware of and maybe if there's some limitations in them. Yeah, well, I mean, I think we could start in some ways with the Protestant Reformation. And it was the Catholic Church was much more attuned to miraculous healing because this has been like even to the present day for canonization of a saint,

there need to be miracles for the most part. But one of the challenges raised by Catholic leaders of the Reformers was, well, you've got this new doctrine and this new theology, where are your miracles to substantiate it? And the response by someone like John Calvin was, well, we don't need miracles because we have the Bible. There's nothing new here. And sometimes people who are kind of charismatic Pentecostal Christians get charged with basing their theology on experience. You could actually suggest that Calvin was basing his theology on the experience of an absence of miracles, that they didn't occur and they didn't continue.

But all through these hundreds of years of history, there's been systematic and increasing investigation of miracles by the Roman Catholic Church. And the rigor of their investigation was actually pushed by the skepticism of the Protestants, I think in a very healthy way. And so the most rigorous criteria for a miracle would be that it is a condition that is organic,

it's not just functional. The diagnosis is unquestionable, the prognosis is incurable, the recovery is instantaneous, complete, and permanent, and there's no possible medical or natural explanation. Now that is a very high bar for a healing, and there have been case-by-case efforts to study those over time, many of them associated either with canonization procedures or the Shrine of Lord in France, where there's actually a medical bureau

with skeptical physicians who are on it. It's been much more recent in terms of Protestant investigation of healing prayer. And it was pushed actually by skeptical scientists in the 19th century. The challenge was raised to create a prayer gauge and basically have a test. Like let's have two wards of hospital

and let's pray for one, not pray for the other and see who does better. Well, none of the Christians wanted to engage with this challenge. They were worried that prayer couldn't stand up to the test, that God wouldn't heal stand up to the test, that God wouldn't heal in response to a test, that the study would somehow be rigged. And so another skeptical scientist said, well, okay, well, let's do a retrospective analysis of prayer for the monarch

of Great Britain, because people are supposed to pray for the monarch. It's even part of the prayer book. And let's see, do monarchs live longer? Well, guess what, they actually live less long, but that probably has a lot to do with the lack of diet, exercise and inbreeding. So not clear what it shows. But in the middle decades and kind of middle to late part

of the 20th century, there were a series of what are called distant intercessory prayer studies of Christian prayer, many of them led by Christians. And some of them did find positive effects from prayer. You would take two wards of a hospital and cardiac patients in those two wards, pray for one group, don't pray for the other, who does better?

And in a couple of different studies, the people who received prayer improved. But then what the media really picked up on was a study in 2006 by Dr. Herbert Benson, who has been at Harvard University, where he looked again at cardiac patients and he asked, well, who would kind of have the better outcomes? And what he found was that prayer did not help. And if people knew that they were the subject of prayer, they actually had worse outcomes. Now, he didn't claim it was because of the prayer, but presumably heart patients

were anxious that they were in such mad shape that people were praying for them, and that didn't help. Now, here's a couple of things to know in kind of just basic kind of design of scientific research, you need to have validity tests. One of these is called ecological validity. In other words, you need to look at how people actually do something in the real world. And for the most part, distant intercessory prayer is like maybe an add-on, but that's not how people who are expectantly praying for healing are primarily thinking

the healing is going to take place. People get up close, it's personal, they hug, they're emotional, they know the person's name, there's relationship involved. Now that's messy to study, but that's how people really do it. And then the second issue is called construct validity. You have to make sure that you're examining the actual same intervention. So all of the studies I've just mentioned had the intercessors, the people doing the praying,

they didn't actually share the same idea of what prayer is with most of the people who pray expectantly for healing today. There were a couple of different groups he recruited. The first group belonged to a Protestant New Thought group that the leaders of this group said petitionary prayer is useless. Do not expect a miracle because there is no divine outside of the cell. It's just your positive thoughts and words.

The second group of intercessors were Catholic sisters who had a particular theology of suffering, that it was redemptive and people should share, should aspire to share in the sufferings of Christ. So they weren't expecting or necessarily even praying for a relief from sick symptoms. And so there is one study that was published in 2000 that resolved some of these issues. This was a study by Dr. Dale Matthews working with a Catholic Charismatic Prayer Practitioner by the name of Francis McNutt, who helped them to get some of the construct validity and the ecological validity right. And they did, they looked at distant prayer and then then they also looked at in-person up close prayer,

which I've called proximal intercessory prayer. Distant prayer didn't do any good. The proximal prayer did result in an improvement of symptoms. Now the challenge with looking at rheumatoid arthritis is it's the kind of condition where mind body effects are actually quite strong. And so it could be the case

that people had better symptom management because people were showing attention and care for them. And so there, it's a good study. It's an important foundational study. But the limitations or the opportunities presented by it are partly what led me to design the study that I referenced when we were first starting to talk, looking at vision and hearing, and particularly we looked at rural Mozambique because there was a specific ministry there that word of mouth in charismatic circles is they've got a lot of effects on those two conditions in that place. And so it made sense to me, if we're going to do this kind of study in one

place, that might be a good place to start. That makes total sense. Again, I really appreciate how careful you're being with this and not just overstating the evidence itself. Maybe you could help us with this. I'm really curious what you think science can show about the supernatural. So you write this towards the beginning of your book. You said, I begin with the premise that the boundaries between the magisterial of science and religion

can be respected while engaging in dialogue. So what does that dialogue look like? Have you respected to magisterious, so to speak? And how far can science go in your mind in showing potential supernatural intervention or action? Yeah, great question. It is an empirical question as to whether someone who has a diagnosed medical condition

recovers from that condition in a measurable, observable, kind of clinically diagnosable way. And so that is the work of scientific empirical investigation. There is not necessarily a theological interpretation or conclusion that has been made about it. So scientific methods can be a way of determining was there a highly unusual, medically naturally unexpected,

at least currently not understood phenomenon. But without drawing a theological conclusion that this absolutely proves that God exists or that God healed in response to prayer. It pushes the conversation though, by calling into sharp relief that there are phenomenon that we cannot explain with our at least current state of knowledge. It seems to me like there's potentially two errors that somebody can make.

Somebody could say that science absolutely cannot speak into this whatsoever and keep the magisterium completely distinct. On the other hand, the way you frame it, this proves that God did it. That seems too strong. But could we say, to me, when it's something that cannot be explained, like you said, arthritis, potentially mind over know, mind over matter in one sense, but it's like healing the blind. So there's clearly something going on here beyond just mental suggestion. And the timing of the prayer, you put the two of those together, it seems to at least suggest

that something is not only not explained, but potentially supernatural. Are you comfortable with the way I framed it? Yeah, absolutely. And I think one kind of just to be clear, like in the realm of scientific discussion, you never prove anything. You falsify hypotheses. It is doesn't it's not just prayer. It's any topic. There always could be new data, new explanations that disprove the current state of knowledge. And I mean, this is where it's interesting. There are even in kind of the the main scientific journals, there was one particular article where a headline said that something had been proven and immediately letters to the editor came in and said, well, you never prove anything. question, what is the most evidence supported, plausible, reasonable explanation for phenomenon? I think that there actually is an abundance of evidence that there are healings that take

place today all over the world, including in the United States, that the most reasonable, plausible explanation is that God answered prayer. And as you state, it's kind of this layering of kinds of data approach and analysis. I mean, I've sometimes used the analogy of like the Hubble Space Telescope has a lot of different kinds of cameras.

And so you use multiple cameras to get multiple angles of vision. And so when you have a recovery that as you say, it's really rapid, if not like in a split second, the person often experiences something like a bolt of electricity that goes through their body. They may hear something. And then you've got the medical evaluations before and after in close proximity.

There was not a medical intervention. There's not anything that you would naturally expect to cause this progression. That, to me, is using appropriate empirical observational scientific methodologies to determine what is the most reasonable explanation for what you have just observed. And then when you see the pattern, that it's not just one case like this, but it's consistent. There are similar characteristics to the cases that you see.

And when you do a clinical study, you see that results are sometimes so generalizable and have such a magnitude across the population that it's not just a one-off that somehow this occurred in this one case, but you do actually see patterns where the same kinds of healings are taking place, same kinds of spiritual experiences and the same kind of medical limitations in terms of accounting for those phenomena. I think you might have answered my next question, but I want to hear you clarify it.

One of the skeptical responses, which I think is totally fair, is to say, okay, Dr. Brown, like, sure, there's prayer examples, even the way you described it. Something seemingly supernatural at the point somebody's praying. But there's like one point, or like two billion Christians worldwide, another 1.5 billion Muslims who also pray. So eventually, given how many people are sick and hurt every day, how many people are praying, eventually there's going to be some that match on. And that's what we find, these extraordinarily rare events

that just through a numbers analysis alone, we would expect but they don't prove anything. Your response is. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's the multiple factors that are going on. Your odds are going to change dramatically if you're not only looking at the testimony of, I prayed, I had a supernatural experience, and now I'm better. But you're also looking at the medical investigation of the treatments that have been given, the diagnosis, the treatment, if anything,

the evaluation after the recovery. And then you see this pattern of kind of case after case after case where everything just lines up in this particular way. And if you do kind of in a way, I would turn back that that framing of the question on you to say, well, let's look at the global situation and which religious group is growing the most rapidly. And it's actually Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity through experiences of healing prayer, there are now something like six hundred thirty five million Pentecostal or charismatic or spirit, spirit filled Christians, Protestant and Catholic worldwide. The growth of this movement is full

the rapidity of both the Christian and the global population. And if you look in areas such as China and Nepal, 80 to 90% of first generation Christians will credit an experience of divine healing and or deliverance from evil spirits and often in cultural and political situations where that's a very costly decision to put in imprisonment. It can result in losing one's family connections, banishment, it can result in death. And so people are not going to lightly make that decision to convert to Christianity based on a healing experience, except they are so fundamentally convinced that Jesus is the most powerful healer. And sure, there are claims of healing in other religious traditions, but historically and in the present day, there is no healer besides Jesus of Nazareth who is credited nearly as often for these kinds of

recoveries. You know what's fascinating about that too is we see the same thing in near-death experiences is that the assumption is, well, you know, Hindus might see Krishna and Buddhists might see Buddha. And I did an interview with Dr. Steve Miller who studied this extensively and he said, actually, there's very rare cases from the sample he's tested of people outside of Christianity seeing their gods.

But Jesus appears disproportionately even with people with very, very different backgrounds. So it's interesting to see the same phenomena in miracles, near-death experiences, which if Christianity is true, is exactly what we would expect. Now I want to throw in there, I know you agree with this, Craig Keener's research on miracles shows that yes, Pentecostalism is growing, but miracles outside of Charismatic and Pentecostal

circles worldwide are happening. It's not reserved just to that realm, which I think makes the case potentially even stronger. But let me ask you a little bit about the criticism that you get. I'm kind of curious which criticism is stronger. So I suspect there would be some naturalists who would just have a problem with bringing anything about faith and religion into science and maybe even be concerned that if you didn't have careful methodology, science could be used to prove the supernatural and undermine science.

On the flip side, there might be some believers who are like, Candy, just have faith. Why are you bringing science into this? Do you get both of those? Which one is more of the criticism that you receive and how do you respond? Do you get both of those? Which one is more of the criticism that you receive and how do you respond? Well, I mean, so Pew Research Center did a study in 2008 and they actually divided

things up exactly in the way that you just framed it. And what they found was there was about 20% of the population who no amount of scientific evidence is enough. Their assumptions going in are such that it is so implausible that there could be a miracle that no amount of evidence, no amount of testimony is enough. Like there must be a bias. And about 47% of the US population already believe in miracles. They don't need miracles. They don't want them.

They're afraid of don't test God. I mean, the context for that is actually the devil's telling jump off a temple, so maybe don't jump off a temple. But I mean, but there are, I mean, but here's the interesting part, about 32% of the US population, so a third of the country mostly believes in miracles, wants to believe in miracles, but it's asking what I think is a question, is there medical evidence, right? If miracles are really happening, this should be something logically that medical science could vet. And it's that group in the middle that the kind of research that I do is primarily targeting. It's the not fully decided group who are actually open to changing their worldview

based upon the evidence. And I think you could argue that part of being all things to all people is using the language and the tools of the cultural priesthood of medical science that is kind of the language of the day in the culture in which we live. I would argue that your research is for two of the groups, probably not the 20%, but if I remember correctly, the 32% that are open, but was it 47% who already put in their goals? 47. Well, belief can vary. that are open, but was it 47% who already put in their goals? 47. Well, belief can vary.

You can believe something 51% or you can believe it 80 or 90%. It's actually really studying a lot of this that I believed in the supernatural, but encouraged my faith and helped me become more bold and speak out about this. So I think you're, what is that, three quarters of 80% of Americans are open and will value for this just in different ways. Yeah, and I mean, I actually completely agree with that as well. And I mean, and actually this is where surveys have found that some 98% of evangelical Christians would say that they believe in miracles.

But most of them, if they pray for healing at all, are praying for God to give wisdom to the doctors and for comfort in suffering. Smaller number pray for healing, even smaller number pray with laying on of hands, and a very small number will pray with anointing with oil. And the reason for this, hope and they're costly because you might be disappointed and this was the this was the the concern that back to kind of my husband and my story. The senior pastor of our church came to us when he found out that we were praying for healing and he said don't do that. I don't want you to lose your faith when he's not healed. And it was a genuine pastoral concern, which I'm sure it came from people dying of sicknesses when they hoped for a miracle.

It was not helpful for us. We forgave, we blessed, and we found another church. But I think we give up too easily. Randy Clark gives a sermon, as your leader of a global ministry called Global Awakening. And his sermon is called the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. And it's a series of anecdotes of people who are wonderfully healed through prayer, and the painful heart wrenching disappointments of people either not recovering or dying And anyone who has prayed for like more than a cold will have had this experience. I've been in hospice rooms where I've prayed for someone for months and years and then they die. I've had loved ones who have died despite prayers.

So I understand that side of the coin. And, but the stories of the miracles, they are a first fruit of the full establishment of God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. And so theologically, it's the devil who came to steal, kill, and destroy. This isn't something God gives us. But there is this battle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. It will be, it will kind of ultimately kind of God wins, right? I mean, but this, this we're still in that battling and that contending. And so I agree that part of the point of the of the miracle is hope that there are these first fruits and we can contend to get even more breakthroughs. And that keeps us going to persevere when there are disappointments and there is suffering along the way.

Let's step back. That's really helpful. By the way, I appreciate your balance as you're approaching that, the successes and what seem to be failures as far as we can tell when it comes to prayer, not sugarcoating it. Talk to me a little bit about what tools of science can be used to determine if the healing actually takes place. The obvious one would be like medical documentation, but are there other tools? How do you assess medical documentation with the tools of science? I mean, I would say, first of all, using social science methods, you can look at patterns

and you can assess kind of even the numbers of people who in their experiences, it's persuasive and thus they become Christians. And here are the qualities, it's persistent prayer, it's medical resources have been exhausted, it's costly travel. There is the tool of the case report or the case study. And this would be an instance where you find a really dramatic, unusual recovery, and then you ask, does this ever happen medically?

And I'll give you a couple of examples of this. One, and these have been researched and published actually, because they're pretty compelling examples, and this is the work of the Global Medical Research Institute, or Global MRI, which I'm on the board for, Josh is the chair of. And so I know a little bit of something about the publications here. So here is an infant is born and at two weeks of age is diagnosed with a paralyzed stomach or gastroparesis more technically. For 16 years, this young man is fed by a feeding tube. Just can't tolerate

any food at all. Has to be vacuumed out if anything accidentally gets swallowed. And then receives prayer, experiences this kind of shock of electricity through his stomach and then eats afterwards with no ill effect. The doctors monitor this. Four months later, they remove the feeding tube and then they continue to follow him for a number of years afterwards. So in this case, it's this combination. We've got the testimony of prayer and the timing. We have the experience not only of relief of the symptom, but of this striking supernatural experience. Like I sense something, I heard the Holy Spirit telling me this, and incidentally the person doing the praying had been healed of a similar condition. His intestines

had actually been severed by like this giant truck that fell on him, and so he needed a miracle of that. He received it, he prays for him, but then we have the medical documentation as him. And so he needed a miracle of that. He received it, he prays for him. But then we have the medical documentation as well. And so we've got all of the medical records from when this individual was an infant and diagnosed up through when he was 16 and then afterwards showing very, very clear diagnosis, showing that there wasn't any question actually. Like, I mean, the doctors are like, yeah, this is what it is. This is how you treat it. And then showing that this is a recovery.

And in the medical literature, when you do a search, there just aren't cases like this. No one recovers from this condition. Like, it's just not there. Another case, a woman who loses her eyesight at the age of 18 over a period of several months from a condition diagnosed as juvenile macular degeneration. She's blind for 12 years, learns braille, uses a white cane, had never seen her husband.

They got married afterwards, had never seen her daughter. And they had gone to one of the big miracle services, nothing happened at home when her husband prayed for her that instantaneously she looks up from the prayer, she's able to see her husband, she sees a photograph of her daughter for the first time. And actually you can talk to her daughter now and she'll kind of say like, oh yeah, I remember what that was like

when my mother saw me for the first time. And I mean, in her experience, like as she describes it, this woman is like, I was blind, now I can see in an instant. Like this was just life transforming. And then she lived for another 50 years. She only died last year and died of like completely unrelated conditions.

She was quite elderly by that point. And so we've got all, we've got photographs of the back of her eyeballs in full color in a medical journal. I mean both of these are published in peer-reviewed medical journals with all of the documentation of not only the diagnosis, the resolution, but also the medical literature review that shows this is completely out of the bounds of what we would expect to find in the literature. And I can give you other cases like this. The third method would be that of the clinical study where you want to know not only is there a black swan, in other words, not all swans are white because we just found a black one, like Here's a miracle. This is not explained. But where the effects have to be common enough and large

enough to be able to show statistical significance, that the intervention is almost certainly. And usually the language or the statistical standard is p is less than 0.05, which means the probability of this just being chance is like really, really, really small. And so that was the case with the Mozambique study where we took audiometry equipment, we took vision charts, we did statistical analysis, we did it was a prospective study where we tested everyone before and after prayer and even with a relatively small sample size, which is harder to find statistical significance for, we found that standard was met because

the improvements were so large and because they were so common. And then we compared those results with studies of hypnosis and suggestion on vision and hearing impairment because there can be some kind of mind-body effect. It's not nearly what you would find with like arthritis, but there's a little bit of an effect. And the effects from the proximal prayer were much more significant than they were for the, than for suggestion, hypnosis,

same kinds of placebo effects. And then we did a replication study in Brazil, which even further and found comparable results, which makes it even less likely that this was somehow just that one in a million statistical anomaly because we happen to test things correctly. And then even just kind of not even hot off the presses,

but not even yet published, but just analyzed another study that we've been a part of at the University of Maryland Medical Center clinical study randomized control trial of the effects of prayer on pain and anxiety and what we found was that people who got a five-minute intervention of prayer had lower pain, lower anxiety compared with a control group who listened to relaxing music. And for the pain group, that improvement lasted even six weeks later. Now, interestingly, we found that there weren't as many effects for Zoom prayer as there were for in-person prayer. So it does seem to be yet another indication that

there are limitations to our technology, but there were benefits for the Zoom prayer as well. It's just in-person is even better. And again, in this case, we use the tool of the randomized control trial so that you can say, well, maybe it was just that you studied them, but no, we had all the same demographic characteristics. And here's another interesting thing about this study, is it didn't matter if people were Christians, didn't matter how often they went to church, didn't matter if they believed in healing, they still had the same benefits for pain and for anxiety. And even the people who are in the prayer group liked the intervention, and they thought that it should be offered in medical settings,

and they wanted to have an offer of prayer. And the people who were in the control group, a lot of them were disappointed to be placed in the control group. And so they were offered prayer after the end of the study so that we would kind of ethically still, like not being depriving someone of an effective medical intervention.

So it seems like the control group in this is that you have the worship that's meant to calm down psychologically, or just not worship music, but calming music in the background for people. Yeah, exactly. Versus the prayer. It seems like you still might say though, having people present, saying that there's some kind of God that cares about them, that could be the factor that makes a difference since you're talking about anxiety and pain, not like blindness and healing a broken bone.

So how do you minimize that possibility in a study like this? Yeah, well, I mean, I think that that's a fair criticism of a limitation of the study. And so I don't think that a fair criticism of a limitation study. And so I don't think that this is kind of the last say. I think that the results were promising enough that it warrants further study. And I think that would actually be a great control group

to do that. Now, what's interesting here is it's a little bit more complicated because I remember when we were doing the Mozambique study, one of the people who was doing a lot of the intercession was a woman by the name of Heidi Baker. And what she told us when we were doing the study is, don't let me get too close to this person before you do the measurement because they might be healed before I even pray. And so if you take the theology

that there is an anointing that Christians carry as representatives of Jesus being filled by the Holy Spirit, there can be something healing in the presence of a Christian and the prayer isn't just the words. And so maybe you'd have to have a study where you've got like a Christian being present in the room and someone who isn't a Christian. I mean, there's all sorts of ways that this thing could spin out. But I think the results are promising, but I think that there's more work to be done.

And I think this is really one of the rallying cries, if I were to give one, is that we really are just at the start. Interventions such as Buddhist-inspired Reiki, mindfulness meditation, these are mainstream in hospitals. And part of the reason for this is the practitioners, they've been doing the work for a long time. They've been publishing the studies and they're not even the greatest studies. Like the best Reiki study by their own account is seven rats did better over the course of a couple of studies, but at least it's something.

But there just hasn't been the value because there's been this worry of don't test God or there's been this kind of fear like oh no science is going to undermine faith and so it's it's important for not just medical providers and not just researchers but like churches to see that this is cutting edge evangelism and mission. This is a priority for the witness of the church. And I mean, this is something that we should be giving our missions dollars for. This is something where we should be showing ourselves

to the priest and encouraging others to. When someone has a dramatic recovery that's like doesn't seem medically explained, they should be looking who can study this and being willing to collect medical records. And people have a worry that's unfounded that, oh no, what about like HIPAA regulations and privacy regulations?

Doesn't this mean you can't get medical records? That's not actually the case. You just need to sign a paper. Patients have a right to their own medical records. And that's something that we can actually help people get is to access their records if they don't know how. But this needs to be a priority, that when

we see someone else who has a dramatic recovery, we don't want to be the person to say, yeah, I grew a new kidney, but I don't want to share my testimony. Just have that experience last week. Not kidding. That is a missed opportunity. And so this needs to be a value of the church. And I do think that this is that there is an openness to this, both to encourage believers in the church to press in when we need the healing and we know someone who did, and to be encouraged, yeah, hope is reasonable, but also evangelistically.

And hope matters, right? So even from a non-supernaturalist perspective, what happens when we don't pray for the miracles and contend for them, there's a vicious cycle where we have less expectation of healing, we stop contending, and then we actually see fewer miraculous healings take place. And it's a well studied psychological phenomenon

that people give up when, and animals give up. If you've had one experience where you've been disappointed, you just stop trying. And when you have that lack of hope, your medical outcomes are actually worse. And so it is good for your health to have hope and to contend and to be encouraged that there's actually medical evidence that you're not,

that this isn't just a pipe dream and you're not doomed to fail. There's good reason, there's good medical reason to think that healings are abundant and there are more available if we just press in, learn from the patterns and be persevering. The first two studies that you referenced, I've actually seen those and wrote blogs on both of them and share them with my class about the young man with the J tube that was healed, he could eat for the first time. The woman cured of blindness and could see her daughter for the first time. I think those are very powerful and you point out in the article, it's like this cannot

be a placebo effect. Placebos cannot heal your stomach or your eyes. I think the latter one that you gave is, I would probably say having not seen the details of it, the amount that it starts to demonstrate the efficacy of prayer is certainly not as strong as the first two. It's part of a larger case, but it does strongly suggest that the idea that prayer is harmful or should be kept out of the hospital room or the doctor's office. Number one, it does seem to have positive effects. So just in terms of even if you didn't believe in it, it seems like if we want to help patients get better, we ought to be open to this and encourage

it in certain settings. But then that raises the question, why? You know, why is it that prayer? Does evolution explain that we just need to believe in some God? Or are we wired in a way to believe in the divine? And that's a conversation we want to have that of course is going to go beyond that study itself. Now, I'm curious, you published this, it's about 12 years ago in Harvard Press, this study again, it's called Testing Prayer, Science and Healing. How has this been received in the academic world?

And how did you get it published by Harvard Press in the first place? Yeah, well, it went through the same peer review process that every kind of study goes through. And so it was reviewed anonymously by multiple reviewers, one of whom was a former professor of Harvard Medical School, and he found the research and the evidence compelling.

And this process, even before this was published in the Harvard book, it was the basic research was published by the peer reviewedreviewed Southern Medical Journal. And so there were some reviewers who were skeptical, they raised concerns, but basically we responded to those concerns. Now once this did go through all the peer review and the science was validated by medical and scientific specialists, there were very positive effects and responses. I mean, I got, I lost track of the like couple hundred interviews that I did, and got contacted by people all around the world. Now, there were also kind of your, your

diehard skeptical responses. So there was someone who offered to run me over with a car as a service to humanity. Oh, my. But even the skeptical responses didn't actually challenge the research on its merits in a meaningful way. It was ad hominem kinds of responses. And so this also then became fuel for the founding

of the Global Medical Research Institute, which has actually published other kind of like more kind of airtight cases. And so another one of those just to kind of mention super briefly was a genetic condition where someone, even a feeding tube wasn't enough for this person to be able to get nutrition. And they were dying because they just were,

they were so weak from lack of nutrition, was in a wheelchair, it was like seven or nine years of age. And it was a healing rooms kind of setting. And again, it was just this instantaneous kind of improvement. And it's been years since that person has had the recovery. So I mean, there's different purposes, I think, in different kinds of research, which kind of gets back to your point about, admittedly, like the the prayer and anxiety study, this wasn't meant to say there's no other explanation, we need to be

speaking to the culture and saying like, look, even if you don't believe this is supernatural, people want this intervention, and they benefit. And so I would say by and large, it's been a very favorable response to this kind of research. And people are wanting prayer to be available even in medical settings. And they're wanting their churches to offer prayer in a meaningful way even beyond the last five minutes at the end of a service. And so healing ministries and deliverance ministries are often like they're they're highly in demand because there isn't the culture of expectant persevering prayer for healing, even in the Christian churches.

And so in some ways, the Christians have been more skeptical than the people who aren't Christians. And I mean, Josh actually did, along with Craig Keener, they did a formal debate. And it was with a Christian medical doctor who wanted to argue that there's nothing supernatural here. People can listen to the debate and decide who is more persuasive in it. But I would say often the skepticism doesn't come from the outside world, it comes from the church. That's so interesting and just frankly disappointing in many ways. Tell us what you're working on now academically. You mentioned the Global Medical Research Institute and on a popular level, you have some projects

you're working on to kind of disseminate this larger to the church and beyond. Well, I'll start with the popular level. And so Christian Broadcasting Network just did a film that you can find through their website on investigating the supernatural. And part one is miracles. They're actually there's a couple more films that are going to be released on angels and demons and on heaven and hell. And it'll do some of the new-death experiences in the third one. And then this summer, Angel Studios is releasing a docu-series called Miracle. And the first season has eight case studies

with music and with cinematography and with medical evidence to really kind of get the word out that miracles are are they're more common than than you might expect. I'm also just finishing up a biography of the Catholic Charismatic Francis McNutt who is part of that Dale Matthews study that I mentioned a bit ago and he has he has quite a life story that I mentioned a bit ago. And he has, he has quite a life story that I think is actually very encouraging for the church in a lot of ways has to do with healing and deliverance and lots of other stuff that I won't spoil kind of the impact of. And then I'm working on a book on demonology,

deliverance and exorcism. Oh, wow. Very, very interesting. We'll keep us posted about that book. We'd love to have you on to discuss it. We'll do. I've had on both Protestants and Catholics who've written on this to get where they agree, maybe some areas where they differ. But the commonality is that the name of Jesus is powerful and the supernatural demonic realm is very, very real.

Last question, we'll wrap up. How has this study on miracles and then also leaning into this study on demonology, the supernatural, just affected your personal faith? When initially we had the medical diagnosis of Josh. And this ties in with the demonic element. And I mean, I won't go into all the details, but there was a demonic presence that came into our room. And so this was healing, it was also deliverance. And I remember at that moment, there was something in our room that hated the name of Jesus. And I mean, it was the point where he was like flipping somersaults around the room and he couldn't say the name of Jesus. And yes, he was a Christian. Yes, he was spirit baptized. His head was like whipping around and saying no at me whenever I said tumor, seizure or a name from a dream I had of like this spiritual thing. I remember so clearly, I can't not believe in Jesus because there is something here that hates the name of Jesus.

But the name of Jesus was more powerful. It was a five-month battle for us. But then there was the showdown and then Jesus kicked out that spirit and Josh was healed. And so I would say through all of this 21 year process now, the scientific evidence is not something that is a danger to faith. It is an encouragement, it is a support to faith. We still put our skeptical academic eyes on every time we look at a case. And I think there are a lot of healings that are wonderful, but maybe they're supernatural. Maybe they're just

God's wonderful providential providing through natural healing processes. So we're still going to skeptically evaluate cases and say, you know, the evidence is stronger for some cases than others. Some scientific studies are more kind of like, Oh, this has to be a miracle than others. But at the end of the day, my faith is so much stronger that I know the Jesus who healed in the Bible and I know the Jesus who heals today. And I know that the name of Jesus is more powerful than any other kind of name and any other force. And so there's no need

for fear, but science is just a wonderful gift of a help to faith and an encouragement to keep pursuing to faith and an encouragement to keep pursuing the kingdom of heaven as it pushes back the kingdom of darkness. Love what you're doing. For those who are interested in the video you talked about, documentary with Billy Halliwell on investigating the supernatural, just interviewed him recently along with Eric Swithin who has a movie that I was actually had a chance to be interviewed for called Show Me Your Glory, two movies with stories and evidence for the supernatural. Something is happening today.

There's an openness to this, there's more evidence that there's ever been. I think we're at a time for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, God is manifesting himself in very special, unique, powerful ways. So keep us posted if big studies drop and we can help spread the word. I'd love to send it to my YouTube community, put it out on X, email to my list, whatever it is. Keep me posted of opportunities that can help spread the word and projects you're working on. We want to support it as we can. Folks, before you go, make sure you hit subscribe. We are going to keep talking about the. Folks, before you go, make sure you hit subscribe.

We are going to keep talking about the supernatural, including, not long from now, a discussion about when atheists have near-death experiences. This one promises to be fascinating. And a bunch of other topics and interviews coming up soon as well. If you thought about studying apologetics, we have classes on the theology and evidence for the supernatural here at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University Distance Online Program. We would love to help equip you to be an effective apologist in your church and family and community

and workplace. Information below. Dr. Candy Brown, this has been such a treat. Thanks for coming on. Thank you so much. It's been wonderful.